A Penny For Your Pottery is one long, countable project: 10,000 handmade ceramic pieces, made in sequence, each priced one cent higher than the piece before it.
The penny rule
The price of a piece is its number times one cent:
| Piece | Price |
|---|---|
| #1 | $0.01 |
| #100 | $1.00 |
| #2,250 | $22.50 |
| #10,000 | $100.00 |
That’s the whole pricing system. There are no sales, no repricing, no exceptions. Because prices only ever step upward one cent at a time, the current price is also a public record of how far the series has come — the price tag is the progress bar.
The pieces
Every piece is handbuilt and individually numbered on its base. Early pieces started as small pinch pots; the forms, clays, and glazes have kept changing as the series goes — which is part of the point. Each piece is a fixed coordinate in the sequence: whatever it is, it’s the only piece with that number, made at that moment in the run.
Numbers before objects
Not every numbered piece exists yet. On the store, pieces that haven’t been made yet are listed as reservations — buying one is buying the right to that number, and the piece arrives when the series reaches it. This started because people kept asking to reserve pieces they hadn’t seen; the surprise turned out to be part of what they wanted.
Where things live
- This site is the archive and the story: piece pages, ranges, photography notes, and writing about the process. It doesn’t sell any pieces and never states whether a piece is currently available.
- The Shopify store is the store: live prices, availability, shipping, and checkout. Every piece page here links to its live listing.
- Instagram — @apennyforyourpottery is where pieces show up as they’re made.
Start browsing
- The Ledger — every photographed piece, by number
- Ranges — documented stretches of the number line, piece by piece
- Techniques & details — the recurring surfaces and marks, and the pieces that carry them
- By photography date — pieces grouped by the day their listing photos were taken
How this site was built
The archive you’re browsing was assembled from scattered listing photographs, partial store records, and a lot of unanswered questions, not from a tidy database.
This site is built out of my own messy notes, half-finished writing, and phone photos with camera filenames. I made something that takes them in and links them together. I can do the same with yours.